It is such a touching show of faith to see Christmas letters hand-written for Santa. This year we wrote to The Man early in the month as part of our Advent count down. Their painstakingly thorough attempts at Santa correspondence were so precious I wanted to lock them all away with their baby teeth and hospital bracelets.
Still, I planned to post the letters, but after five futile minutes on the internet looking for a Santa Claus North Pole mailing address all I could find online were email addresses for Santa. So very, very sad. The cutest part of Christmas letters is the handwriting. Children shouldn’t stand at a computer and dictate their desires, they should be drawing pictures and practicing cursive, adding hearts and writing their names.
I’m so glad I couldn’t find an address because I don’t know if I’d have been able to send them off anyway. I told the kids Dad faxed them from the office so I could keep them for their files. Here they are, in all their adorable self-involved, type translated glory.
From June, 5–I really did try to help her when she’d let me:
“To Santa (heart heart) From (heart) June (heart),
I love you, BaRbiE stuff (heart heart, thing that looks like a dying kite, heart) caddag patch kid (heart, swirlie, heart) lower right corner JeWRy, makeup, (heart heart another weird kite thing), lower left corner piqy (which has absolutely no meaning whatsoever to me). Bottom of page center (heart) June (heart).”
Man I love that girl.
From Rex, 7:
“Dear Santa, I wanta toy face car with a remote. control.” See how hard it is to capture it in type? You miss the accidental cross on the “r” in race car making it an unfortunate “f” and the extra punctuation, not to mention his lovely handwriting that reminds me of a candy cane font. You also can’t see the two-sided picture of remote control race cars and helicopters brilliantly drawn so Santa wouldn’t have any trouble knowing exactly what Rex was talking about.
And finally, from Harrison. Harrison, 9 and in the fourth grade, decided this year that yes, he still believes in Santa Claus and no, he doesn’t want us to tell him the truth. He took a lot of time with his letter and I consider it one of the most precious things I’ve ever read in my entire life. There’s something about a child’s last hopeful push, the faith it shows to put your tentative beliefs down in print and send them off to the North Pole and actually believe some dude in Red is going to make them happen. I love this kid and I love this letter.
“To Santa,
How are you? I hope your fine. I’m so excited till christmas! How is everyone at the north pole? I hope you don’t have the flu. Could I give you my list of what I want for christmas? Great! Here is the list : I want a yo-yo, BB Gun, New Super Mario bros in Wii, Super mario Galaxy2, C. p. kid, a ink pen (The feather kind,) a Swis army nife, a remote control hellicooper, plane, D.S. charger. That’s all have to go. bye Santa!
From Harrison”
In case you’re wondering a C.P. Kid is a cabbage patch kid. His father is absolutely horrified, but Harry has been helping me pick them out for his little sisters and secretly wants one of his own (a boy with red hair). Jason is afraid he’ll lose his man card if his son has a doll, but I kind of think that since Harrison also asked for heroic weaponry and things that go zoom it’s really not a big deal. We’ll see if Santa and Mrs. Claus can get on the same page for this one.
Either way, have a very merry Christmas. May we all take a lesson from the children around us and practice a little more faith and hope in the unbelievable this coming year. If Christmas morning at my house is any proof, there’s definitely power in that kind of belief.
This was so adorable! I love those letters, it makes me wish I had copied my kids’ letters before sending them off to Santa. Oh, it makes my heart hurt thinking about it, I’ll have to remember that next year, hand-written letters are irreplaceable. For mailing purposes, we just have each child put their letter in their own envelope, write Santa, North Pole on the front and their own name as the sender, then stick them in mailbox without a stamp or anything. We just randomly did that last year and both then and this year the same thing happened: the letters were taken and a couple of days later a fat letter appeared in the mailbox addressed to each of the kids and from Santa. Upon opening, inside each child had their own letter from Santa, obviously a typed form letter, but each one was different. And they’re each signed in cursive from “Santa”. The kids were ecstatic; thank you to the unknown person at the post office that did that!
Harrison wants a pen…..with a feather in it. That is my kind of boy, right there. If I’d have known…I would have bequeathed him Ms. Shields’. Merry Christmas to you and yours Annie 🙂
— Amy and Family 🙂
Good for Harrison. I just told my co-workers boys need dolls to cuddle and not violent video games. Maybe there would be less anger in our young men. By the way my doughter (hubby in Air Force, 4 tours to Afghanistan) and I share and love your blog. Thanks for making us laugh and cry.
Debbie, I love service men and women and their amazing apouses. Delivered our first few Mrs Claus bags tonight. So wonderful! Merry Christmas to you and yours.
My brother had a CPKid named Cory that he absolutely loved for years. Tell dad not to worry; they often use them as buddies to engage in other boyhood activities and imaginations. 🙂